Working together with purpose: How Steward Ownership shapes QBayLogic
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In 2023, QBayLogic made a significant shift in how the company is owned and governed. Instead of traditional shareholders, the company adopted steward ownership—a model where profit stays within the company and control cannot be bought or inherited. For CEO Maarten Kuper, this was a practical solution to a very real problem: how do you fairly include people who want to build the company together?
In this interview, Maarten explains how steward ownership came about, what it means in practice, and how it shapes the way QBayLogic works and delivers its unique solutions.
When you joined QBayLogic in 2021, the company was already five years old. How did the question of ownership come up?
My father and Christiaan (Baaij, ed.) started the company in 2016 to preserve our Clash compiler and the knowledge around it. My father was a lecturer at the University of Twente—a doctor and engineer who was due to retire. The business came directly from science: they were very good at the FPGA engineering work we still specialize in.
From the beginning, we had discussions on how ownership of the company should be organized. When my involvement with QBayLogic eventually turned into a full-time commitment, the discussions intensified. As a natural heir, I could have acquired a share in the company for very little money.
You did not choose this route, however. Why not?
Other colleagues also expressed the desire to join as partners. Some had been with the company from the beginning and all of them were eager to help take the company into the next stage. But becoming a shareholder was prohibitively expensive for them and this just didn’t feel fair.
At some point, we happened to talk to a director at another company who told us: “You should look at steward ownership.” And that’s how we got involved with it. In 2023, we took the step to implement steward ownership.
Steward ownership separates control of the company from control over its profits, with the goal of putting the purpose of the company first and preventing owners from selling the company on the market or extracting wealth from it in other ways. What does this mean for QBayLogic in practice?
We’re converting all existing shares to cumulative preference shares, eventually completely separating business decisions from control over profits. These preference shares give the owners priority if the company decides to pay dividend, but this is the only privilege the owners have. As an incentive to convert existing stock to cumulative preference shares, there’s a 6% yearly interest payment over the non-converted stock.
The beautiful thing is that the question of ‘who can be a shareholder’ just disappeared. In a sense, everyone is a shareholder now, while at the same time, no one is anymore. We all work together in and for the company.
But what happens to the company's profit now?
It stays in the company. When you run a steward-owned company, there’s only three things you can do with your profits once all regular stock is converted to cumprefs: pay your coworkers higher salaries, invest in the company and its people or save it for the future because you foresee costs ahead. In all cases, the money stays where it has the most impact on the company’s purpose.
The power of the concept is that everyone who works at QBayLogic has the feeling of working for QBayLogic, not for the bank accounts of two or three people. That changes the dynamics completely. We all work together for the good of the company and the growth of the company.
Who are the stewards, and what's their role?
This, we are still figuring out. The legal process is quite involved and we’re taking it step by step. Part of the process is defining who the stewards should be and what the foundation’s goal really is. The stewards of foundations are typically employees of the company itself or directors of other steward-owned companies, and their role is to ensure that your mission and vision are upheld. Once that’s defined, you don’t actually have to be very involved as a steward. You just ensure that the plans we have fit that mission and vision.
Is steward ownership legally still a private limited company-type structure?
No, no! It’s really something quite different—you step out of the currently known capitalist system and truly build something new. Although steward ownership itself isn’t new. Bosch, the tool company, has been steward-owned and successful for many years.
It really happens much more than people realize. You can see on their website where stewards are, which companies are involved. It’s becoming more common, which has also prompted investors to think about how to invest in steward-owned companies. Because the separation of control and profit presents a challenge to their model as well.
By the way, Bosch is 94% steward-owned. Just to show that it doesn’t have to be one or the other and hybrid models are possible.
How does investment work without traditional shareholders?
You can’t just have a venture capitalist step in and take over, only to sell the company to someone else a few years later. The traditional buyer doesn’t fit the model. We are talking to investors – like Oost NL, who are really interested in investing in steward-owned companies – but it’s different.
As an investor, you have no way of taking control over the company. There’s just our promise that we will pay a percentage return if the company does well and eventually pay back the principal. Shareholders can’t demand profit be paid out as dividend, which saves the company a lot of uncertainty and frees up capital for long-term investment, but requires different thinking from investors.
We know from research that steward ownership correlates with employee happiness. And even with lower divorce rates! How has it affected how people work at QBayLogic?
I don’t know about the divorce rates, but in the nine years we’ve existed now, only one person has left. That’s quite unique, I think. That said, some people find steward ownership more appealing than others. But in general, everybody is happy with it. You do your work, knowing that you don’t work for one or two shareholders to make some extra income—you work for the mission and the financial success of the company.
Is discussing steward ownership part of your hiring process?
As far as I know, it’s not discussed explicitly. But I’m not involved in most of those conversations, because the engineers themselves decide if someone is a good fit. It’s more just a part of who we are. One more thing in a spectrum of things that make us appealing, to make you want to work with this company.
Finally, what does steward ownership mean for how you lead?
I find it very interesting. There are very large companies, like Bosch—440,000 people work there worldwide – that are steward-owned but strangely, you don’t see or read much about how such companies are run. To me, the essence is that you ensure that, whatever happens, your company’s mission and vision remain central.
For me, this fits with how I see leadership: not telling people what to do but facilitating others and making sure that everyone in the company can really do what they’re good at and thrive and feel cared for. That’s me.
This also translates to the quality of our products and services. Being more involved with the company also makes our engineers more involved with the results of their projects. They take ownership of their work. There are real pride and joy in what they do and how they do it. Our clients take notice and appreciate this. And since the profit stays in the company, I can focus on people, purpose, vision and quality.
